Excerpt from the Introduction

In March 2020, when I left my home at the time in Halifax, temporarily relocating to Victoria to work on this next book in my Hand Drawn series, I couldn’t have known just how much the world was about to change. Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country, I had already chosen British Columbia’s vibrant capital as the next subject for my collection of sketches and stories. New to the city, after two weeks of careful self-isolation I walked and biked its streets, sketching on location, and began to notice the quirks and special characteristics of each neighbourhood. I started where I lived in the verdant and stately Rockland neighbourhood just east of downtown. Gradually I increased the circumference of my daily jaunts, until, after my fourteen months in the city, I felt the satisfaction one feels upon completing a puzzle, all the pieces fitting together in my mind’s eye.

My only other significant time in Victoria was a two-week summer dance intensive when I was eleven. It was an adventure: travelling by ferry from the mainland and living away from my childhood home in West Vancouver; however, my days were spent learning choreography in a windowless school gymnasium. The only lasting impression of the city itself was a British-style sweet shop that sold candies tasting of perfume. Many people have the impression that this is all Victoria is: a candied facsimile of olde England. However, returning as an adult, I found it to be so much more. Not only does its downtown core boast the oldest Chinatown in Canada, a testament to the contributions of new settlers from that country, but the city is also host to independent Mexican, Filipino, and Korean grocers.

Victoria is filled with notable architecture, from the impressive Empress Hotel to charming beach cottages. But the city’s flora and fauna became an equal focus for me. Each day held a new discovery: a serpentine spine surfacing on the water (was it a seal, or an otter, or maybe a porpoise?) or the jagged, heavy breathing of a sea lion swimming off Clover Point as early risers jogged by on Dallas Road, en route to Beacon Hill Park.

To truly understand Victoria, I went farther afield; the places that rub shoulders with the city are part of its psyche too. Most obvious from a tourist perspective is the Butchart Gardens, where typically over a million visitors each year wander its garden paths. By bike, I could easily reach the neighbouring municipalities of Esquimalt and Oak Bay. I joined the local car sharing co-operative and made day trips to North Saanich, Sidney, and the Juan de Fuca Trail. I’ve collected and organized these sketches and stories in clusters that radiate out from downtown Victoria. They may be out of seasonal order, but are still true to the flavour of each neighbourhood in the way I understand them.

In a year like no other, I had less opportunity to interact directly with people. In some ways, it actually made my job of stopping, observing, and appreciating through the act of drawing feel all the more vital. This book does not seek to focus on the pandemic but rather on the life pulse of the city of Victoria that kept on going in spite of it. The city’s ever-improving active transportation, fragrant gardens, beach walks accompanied by friendly head nods, combined with progressive and creative residents ensured there was always something interesting around the corner.